Commented on another post and wanted to share.

 

I'll share my experience. Met in Bible College. So the expectation from the jump was me in full time ministry in a church somewhere. It was Bible College.

 

Married 21 years. Supported my ex wife through her RN schooling. Eventually she rose through the ranks into an executive position with a start up healthcare\homehealth.

 

Our fields were going to be off monetarily as I was in social work. I dabbled in IT for a bit but eventually settled in full time ministry.

 

Point being she always made more money than me. This was known and accepted. However, due to most cases.....they are never content and never happy.

 

So this comes to the divorce side of things. We got pregnant after 18 years of marriage and ran the numbers on my salary and since 2/3's of mine would go to daycare it made sense for me to be a stay at home father. I was all for it as I helped my siblings who were older than me and I was prepared for the gig.

 

So when crap hit the fan and she cheated things went south real fast. She was trying to get me out of the home first of all. I vowed I would never leave my son no matter what. Her and her attorney did everything in their power to remove me and failed.

 

We tried mediation twice. Of which I brought up alimony due to her always making more money than me. We had a male mediator and he almost laughed at me for asking. He told me that alimony is only given when the other spouse is not able to make an income and provide for themself. Since I had a degree a judge wouldn't grant it.

bullshit

 

It wasn't that I wanted it. I asked about it. Her and her attorney tried to make me out to be a dead beat and a mooch as I wasn't leaving our home or my son. Stating that I needed to get employment moving forward. Well no daycare was going to raise my newborn and I wasn't comfortable until he was at an age that he could communicate.

 

Also, for the record, prior to me resigning my position in the church I had worked our whole marriage. It wasn't until she decided to cheat that the problems began.

 

My last attorney made an excellent point as my ex was going to have to pay child support but she told me "look you don't want strings attached to her in any way.....best to have a clean break"

 

Like I said I didn't want alimony but I wanted to check into it.

 

As for the mediator......what a cock bag with his comments. I can give you numerous instances where the wife received spousal support and had a degree.

 

Btw......I stayed home with my son till he was almost 3......we got pushed back because of covid and my evil covert cheating narcissist wife paid for it all while we waited. Eventually we reached an agreement to settle and she bought me out of our home. We could have reached a settlement sooner but she wasn't going to budge on putting our newborn in daycare and neither was I. By the time we were ready for trial the daycare thing wasn't a issue anymore and we reached an agreement. Which included 50\50 custody.

Boy was my first attorney pissed that he didn't get his beloved trial fee. LOL

 

My best advice to men in my situation that make up about 3% of divorces is stick to your gut and what you want. Make sure it's realistic and hang on. They tried to throw everything at me including a order of protection and they FAILED.

 

Her attorney's misstep was that she thought she was going to run me through like the other 97%. I told my ex and her attorney that you're messing with the wrong one and you wouldn't get what you wanted. And they didn't.

 

Ex is remarried and my son is five now. I did the research and knew that if you can get the first 3 years right with your child he'd be good. If you f that up you'd could spend the rest of his life trying to.

 

Final note as I've been divorced for over 2 years now. Thankfully we co parent great and my son will start school next fall. It's the one silver lining in all of this. I've heard the horror stories with co parenting with a narcissist. I'm thankful for this. Also, as you can tell I come from faith. I'll just tell you that but for my relationship in Christ and my son I'm not sure where I'd be. My son helped me keep my head on straight as I knew they were trying to push my buttons to get me away from him. It was very hard but in the end I did everything right and didn't f it up.

 

Hang in there fellas........if I can beat these bastards through prayer and consistency so can you.

Please keep me in prayer I'm really struggling these days. /s

Cheers!